Одноэтажная Америка / Little Golden America

Behind the counter, back and forth, run red-headed young men with white sailor caps cocked on the sides of their heads, and coquettish young women, with permanent waves that will last for years, who look like the latest and at the moment the most fashionable movie star. At times they resemble Kay Francis, at other times Greta Garbo; before that they all looked likeGloria Swanson. The girls whip cream, open highly polished nickel taps out of which emerge noisy streams of seltzer water, roast chickens, and throw pieces of ice into a glass with a resounding tinkle.

Although the drug-store has been long ago converted into an eating establishment, its proprietor is nevertheless obliged to be a pharmacist and have a certain baggage of learning, which is insistently indispensable while serving coffee, ice-cream, toasted bread, and other drug-store merchandise.

In the most distant corner of this lively establishment is a small glass closet with little jars, boxes, and bottles. One has to spend at least a half-hour in a drug-store before one notices this little closet.

There is not one drug-store left in New York where the pharmacist himself prepares medicines. Oh, this remarkable establishment is wrapped in the aureole of medical mysteries! To prove that here medicines are actually prepared by hand, the proprietor of the drug-store displays in the window a pile of old yellowed prescriptions. It all looks like the den of a medieval alchemist. This is no ordinary drug-store.

We looked sadly at the menu. Dinner #1, Dinner #2, Dinner #3, Dinner #4—Dinner Number One, Dinner Number Two, Dinner Number Three, Dinner Number Four! Dinner #4 costs twice as much as Dinner #2, but that doesn’t mean that it is twice as good. No! There is simply twice as much of it. If in Dinner #2 a course called “country sausage” consists of three chopped off sausages, then in Dinner #4 there will be six chopped off sausages, but the taste will be exactly the same.

After dinner we become interested in the spiritual fare in which the drug-store traded. Here were wildly decorated picture postcards with views of local sights – very cheap, two for five cents. Black ones cost five cents apiece. The difference in price was right. The black postcards were excellent, while the coloured, ones were a lot of trash.